


Do  Not Seek To Name The Nameless

by Zonicle



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood and Gore, Death, Hallucinations, Horror, Insanity, Lovecraftian, Lovecraftian Monster(s), Nightmares
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25771930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zonicle/pseuds/Zonicle
Summary: The scribe stared up into the darkness, body trembling and mind numb with the fear that had been strangely absent until now. He knew that something terrible lived in the shadows just out of his reach, existing in the unused corners of his mind that had previously gone unnoticed. Without knowing how, he was aware of the fact that this creature was older than he could perceive, and that in all its long years it had never had a name. It was the monster under every bed and in every closet, the thing that lurks in the dark and makes you burrow deeper under the blankets at night. And, if it was ever named, if it was ever summoned from its resting place in the cracks of the universe, the world would be consumed by it.
Kudos: 1





	1. Chaos

The scribe sat at his desk, ink stained fingers tapping at the wood in a mindless rhythm as the flickering candlelight played across his face and made the shadows dance along the walls. He raised his quill to the roll of blank parchment before him, watching, entranced, as a drop of blue ink fell from the tip and splattered against the pristine ivory.   
Staring at that single imperfection, impossibly deep blue against white, the scribe allowed his vision to lose focus. The drop of ink seemed to grow wider and deeper as the rest of the world blurred, like an infinite chasm opening to swallow him whole. He leaned forward, swaying in his seat as if he stood at the edge of a precipice and couldn't decide whether or not to let himself fall.   
The silence he had been blanketed by for countless sleepless hours was broken for the first time by a whisper so quiet he wasn’t sure he had heard it all.   
As the ink grew darker and consumed his vision, the whispers grew louder and more insistent; the words unintelligible, but the voice crooning and sickly sweet. The murmurs were accompanied by fleeting touches, fingertips skimming over the back of his neck, a hand resting lightly on his shoulder or cupping his cheek in its palm for a heartbeat.   
The ink splatter had widened into a yawning abyss, strange shapes and shadows roiling in its depths while red and white eyes glistened in the unending darkness. The invisible hands rested on his back and shoulders, pushing him gently forward, urging him to let himself fall into the chasm below.   
The scribe swayed, back and forth, each time coming a little closer to the edge, tempting fate as he balanced on a knife's edge before the void. His eyes were wide and blind to all but the ever growing black hole, the grasping hands and gaping jaws forming from the shadows behind him went unnoticed even as they latched onto the hem of his robes and gripped his trailing sleeves.   
The quill he had slaved over for many days and nights, making absolutely certain the feather was the right shape and size, the runes carved into the silver tip flawless, fell from numb fingers as his body went suddenly slack. He was leaning precariously over the abyss, one twitch away from plummeting into the grasping darkness. For one breath, everything went still. The shadows ceased their wild dance, the whispers fell silent, and the unknowable entity within the void became unnaturally still.   
Then, the scribe took a second breath, leant too far forward, and fell.   
The darkness wrapped around him like a vice, pinning his arms to his sides and coiling over his throat, making him fight for each gasping breath. All around him, things scuttled in the shadows, brushing past his arms and face like spiders or cockroaches.   
The scribe stared up into the darkness, body trembling and mind numb with the fear that had been strangely absent until now. He knew that something terrible lived in the shadows just out of his reach, existing in the unused corners of his mind that had previously gone unnoticed. Without knowing how, he was aware of the fact that this creature was older than he could perceive, and that in all its long years it had never had a name. It was the monster under every bed and in every closet, the thing that lurks in the dark and makes you burrow deeper under the blankets at night. And, if it was ever named, if it was ever summoned from its resting place in the cracks of the universe, the world would be consumed by it.   
The thing- he refused to give it a name, to give it form- crept closer to him, a writhing mass of scuttling legs and curling tentacles. It began to whisper in his ear, the language as old as time itself, yet the words reverberated in his bones and he understood. It described to him terrible, unspeakable things, and made beautiful, glittering promises. All he had to do was give it a name, it would be an easy task, surely, with all his pretty words, to find one that fit.   
The scribe shut his eyes and forced himself to ignore the words that felt like oil squirming over his skin, turning his face away from the beast that loomed above him and spoke with a thousand voices. He held strong for a while, allowing the words to wash over him while he dug his fingers into his palms hard enough to draw blood. But, the monster was patient, it had spent all of eternity as a formless thought hiding at the edges of the universe, it would not be beaten by any mortal. It kept whispering to him, a steady stream of poisoned words.  
The day the scribe broke, as all men do, the very Earth trembled and every star in the universe went dark for one heart stopping moment as the echoes of the beast’s laughter rang throughout space and time.   
When the scribe was deposited back into his own reality, it was as if he had never left. No time had passed from the moment he fell into the void, and he sat at his desk, ink splattered parchment spread out before him. Glassy eyes stared unblinkingly at the bare wall in front of him, his face slack and wiped of all emotion. He picked the black feather quill up off the ground with jerky movements, brought his thumb up to his mouth and bit down hard enough to break the skin. Blood welled up in his mouth and stained his teeth, a few drops falling to join the blue ink splatter on the parchment.   
Dipping the quill into the blood pooling in his cupped palm, he brought it down upon the parchment, writing at first in long practiced calligraphy, then in a progressively messier scrawl as his movements became more frantic and he increased the pressure on the quill. His breath came in strangled gasps, his glazed eyes darted around furtively, and his hands shook. He slashed the letters of a single word onto the parchment over and over until the ivory of the scroll was hidden beneath choppy, red letters.   
When the quill finally tore through the parchment, leaving a jagged slash in its wake, he leaned back, panting. His hands trembled, thumb still bleeding sluggishly and heart hammering too loudly in his ears.   
He stared up at the ceiling, struggling to get his breathing under control and refusing to gaze upon what he had done.   
On the parchment, he had written a single word over and over again. It was crammed into every corner of the page, sometimes written sideways or upside down, even overlapping in places.   
A name for something that should never have been given form, bloodshed marking its arrival. It was the beast from the pit, a monster born of nightmares and primordial fear. And now, it had a name, and a shape with which to enter our world.   
Written in blood that gleamed under the uncertain candlelight was the name the scribe had bestowed upon it.   
Chaos.  
And with that, it’s first name, Chaos stepped into our world reeking of death and destruction, and began its wild, untamable dance across existence, leaving rivers of blood and seas of corpses in its wake.


	2. I Speak To You While You Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The beast has received many names in the innumerable years it has lurked in the darkened coroners of our world. This is the second.

Late at night, when the world is still and silent, and the stars burn in the inky blackness far above, she hears the voices. Sometimes, the whispers are high pitched and innocent, like the twitter of a bright songbird. Other nights, it speaks in a voice like melted chocolate, each word carefully chosen and enunciated, like a posh gentleman all in velvet. And, on those dark nights when even the moon itself hides its face and the shadows reach out with desperate, grasping fingers, it speaks in a voice like broken glass and grinding bone, each sentence sharp as a knife and dripping with poison.   
It comes to her in dreams, nightmarish visions where the scent of decay fills her nostrils and blood stains her hands, seeping into her skin so deep that she feels it, warm and thick as molasses between her fingers, even when awake. It tells stories of bygone days when it ran rampant and untethered, days when people still knew to fear the things that lurked in the dark and cloaked themselves in shadows deep as ink. It shows her unspeakable horrors, making her intimately familiar with the cloying scent of rot, the sickly sweetness of disease, and the way a person's skin can melt like wax if the fire is hot enough, sloughing off their bones as they burn.   
It shows her war, the bite of cold steel and the way the chill of death comes creeping in, enveloping a body in a grotesque imitation of a mother’s embrace. It tells her of lies and deceit, shows her the hulking beast that lurks just beneath the skin that men call greed, makes her witness every atrocity ever committed in the name of ambition or power or the greater good.   
She is helpless to stop the dreams, to turn away from the visions or close her ears to the whispers. When she refuses to sleep, too scared to close her eyes as she sits surrounded by flickering candles to chase away the dark, the dreams bleed into the waking world, blurring the line between realities until it is nothing more than a wavering line of mist.   
Her curtains remain tightly drawn at every hour of the day, and she refuses to allow entry to anyone. She can not risk seeing their faces, she does not want it to show her their deaths, force her to listen to their screams, as it had done that first day reality crumbled. She watched blood pour from their eyes and mouth, stood in silent horror as they clawed off their own skin, their screams ringing in her ears.   
After endless days spent huddled in a brightly lit corner, hugging her knees and attempting to breath as the mind numbing fear threatened to smother her, the voices ask for something. It uses the voice that sounds like a gentleman, cultured and reasonable, when it tells her what it wants.   
In a voice like chocolate covered velvet, it asks for a name.  
She draws in tighter to herself, shoulders hunched and face hidden in her knees as she whispers a prayer in a voice that trembles and cracks with terror. Shaking her head frantically, she makes no reply except to grip her rosary tighter even as it digs painfully into soft flesh.   
The voice does not relent. Every hour, on the hour, it makes its request. “Give me a name, any name will do,” it says, each time using a different voice, a different tone. Sometimes it screams, demanding she comply in a voice loud as a thunder clap, while at other times it pleads, begs and cajoles in voices that drip with honey; thick and cloying in their sweetness.   
It does not allow her to sleep, and she feels her tenuous hold on sanity slipping further as the seconds tick by. She knows the thing that haunts her, has seen its very soul, and knows what will happen if she gives it another name, another form. To unleash a monster into the world, more gruesome than any beast that has ever walked the earth, is something she cannot do.   
But, even still, it will not relent. It has patience beyond any mortal’s and does not want for time. Soon enough, she will break, and it will be there still, as certain and inevitable as the setting sun.  
When she finally breaks, it is like shattering glass; loud and jarring and irreparable.   
The world stutters to a halt for a moment, the earth trembling as every creature holds its breath, waiting in heart-stopping terror for something it cannot identify.  
Eyes wild, pupils blown wide as they dart around the room, she digs her nails into her knees hard enough to draw blood. It drips down her legs in warm, sticky rivulets and coats the tips of her fingers. Hands twitching uncontrollably, she paints a single word in her life’s blood with stuttering, jerky movements. Each letter sharp as a knife’s edge, stained into the wood flooring with a single-minded intensity.   
She leans back on her heels once the deed is done, muttering incoherently, clawing almost absently at the skin of her face, carving bloody tear tracks onto her cheeks.   
The name she has split her blood to welcome into the world glares up at her from the floor, all jagged edges and too sharp corners as her blood dries and cracks.   
Madness.  
The beast entered the world with this, it’s second form, through shaking hands and crazed muttering, it’s new name written in the blood of a Madman. It tore through the world like a disease, it’s rotting fingers caressing healthy minds and leaving them broken husks, thoughts scattered and impossible to grasp.


End file.
